


The Perfect Present

by Mereel401



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-19 14:50:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13125957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mereel401/pseuds/Mereel401
Summary: Just a small christmas present for one of my best friends.





	1. Acquisition

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dcs304](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=dcs304).



Shepard was humming some silly Christmas song from her distant childhood, as she parked her skycar at a corporate building just outside of Armali’s industrial spaceport. The building itself, was a modest sized office constructed in a mixture of asari and human styles, directly connected to a much larger warehouse. Right above the door the was a large sign proudly proclaiming ‘Peters Import & Export Logistics, Thessia’s No. 1 for discreet transport’.

Even after almost thirty years of using the company’s services for anything she had to send or receive outside of official House T’soni channels, almost 100% of the time some form of surprise for Liara, without her bondmate noticing Elara was not sure whether the name was meant as a joke or whether the owner truly was unaware what kind of connotations the words Import/Export together with discreet had in most people’s minds.

Once she was inside she was greeted enthusiastically by Tanis the owner. “Commander it’s been a while.” The man was somewhere in his fifties and his hair had started to slowly but surly turn grey, but otherwise he still looked like he had thirty years ago, when he and a few dozen others had sacrificed both their careers and their future in the Alliance to help her escape the Sol system and Alliance custody after the Reapers defeat.

“The monsters have kept me busy” She chuckled before adding solemnly “I also had to burry one of my former crewmates two months ago, so there was a lot to do.”

“Children will do that to you, and I am sorry to hear, it’s never easy losing friends. But I digress, you are here for your artifact, just give ma a moment to get it for you.”

After the other human had walked through a door in the back Shepard allowed her a moment to think about Zaeed, while he had been by no means one of her closest friends his death had still come as somewhat of a shock. Not only had she liked the old mercenary despite or maybe because of his ‘I don’t give a shit’ attitude but it had also served as a reminder, that barring any complications or accidents she would see all of her crewmembers die thanks to the augmentations Cerberus made to her body.

Before she could drift deeper into her dark thoughts, to a place she still visited time to time and where usually only her daughters or bondmate could reach her, the trader came back carrying a middle-sized jewelry box. After carefully depositing it on the counter in front of him, he slowly opened it with a big grin. “Take a look for yourself.”

The necklace was breathtaking, an old Prothean piece it was a whiteish silvery color, and had small fine inscriptions in Prothean all around the central charm. It had taken Shepard months to not only find a piece in both color and size that would fit Liara, but to convince the previous owner to part with such a fine piece of ancient art. And now finally she had the perfect Christmas present for her soulmate, the woman she would save the galaxy all over again from the reapers, if it would mean at the end the life she was now living.


	2. Wrapping

After she had picked up Liara’s gift and returned to their mansion just outside of Armali Shepard had to find a good hiding spot until she could find a quiet moment to wrap it in gift wrapping. During the short flight back home she went through her mental list of possible hiding spots, before she settled on the most obvious, and therefore least likely for her curios bondmate to search, place her workshop.

  
After unlocking the door and making her way into the large room, filled with everything from raw materials over different sized omni-forges and spare parts to already finished projects, Elara went over to a small shelf filled with burnt out electronic parts she kept there before recycling. She placed the jewelry-box inside a container and filled it with charred wires until she wasn’t able to see it any more. Lastly, she set took a small STG espionage probe she had been studying from one of her worktables and placed it on the shelf, set to alarm her should anyone come near it.

* * *

It took nearly two weeks for a chance to wrap the gift to open up. Liara had been invited to give a guest lecture at the University of Serrice about classification methods of Prothean artifacts and Aethyta had taken their children to one of her ‘mystery trips’. Shepard didn’t know exactly where the matriarch took her grandchildren or what they were doing there, but her daughters loved these trips with their grandfather and she trusted Aethyta not to put the kids in any form of danger.

  
Unlike the gifts for their little blue girls, the wrappings and bows of which were colorful and full of cartoon animals and characters, she had a more elegant look envisioned for her wife’s present.

  
She carefully wrapped the box in plain brown wrapping paper before sticking a wide strip of burlap around the middle. Next she added a slightly smaller strip of white silk right in the center of the bigger one. Then she took a small branch of a special kind of blue colored fir breed for Thessian gardens. Lastly she took another smaller blue silk ribbon and tied it around both the gift and the branch finishing in a nice looking bowknot.

  
Taking a step back, Shepard took her work in. It looked exactly like she had hoped it would, both elegant and simple while utilizing the T'Soni house colors. It would be the perfect gift.


	3. Presents

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick clarification of my headcanon concerning Asari children. I have the gestation period at two whole years and after that the growth rate of children roughly half that of humans, with sexual maturity in the mid to late thirties and full legal adulthood and independence at forty.

It was a testament to more than three decades spent in peaceful and calm Armali, that the thing that woke Shepard on Christmas morning was not the stampede of little feet or the loud banging of the master-bedroom door but rather the sudden impact of her middle child jumping on her stomach. In the time during and immediately after her military service, her first instinctual reaction would have been to draw her handgun from under her pillow and to target the door even before it would have opened.

Her gun had now been stored in a DNA and code locked walk-in gun cabinet for thirty years since the birth of Elena her first born daughter, while her instincts had, at least when in her bed in the estate, been somewhat reduced by trust in both their commandos and her own personal added extra security measures. So instead of reacting in any of the myriad of violent ways she had been trained to from age ten onwards, prior experience with her children made her grab the culprit and with a groan that was only partially exaggerated twist around, trapping the young Asari under her.

“Well what do we have here? A little trouble maker? And that at ….” Elara chuckled while checking the clock sitting on her nightstand. “Apparently 6 o’clock in the morning.” She couldn’t help but groan again at the early hour, despite knowing why her daughters were so excited.

Lysa wriggled in her arms so she could look her in the eyes, an incredulous look on her delicate features. “But Daddy it’s Christmas. Santa was here.”

From her left Shepard heard one of the most beautiful sound in the universe, the light carefree laughter of her bondmate. “Yes, Daddy Santa was here.” When Elara turned around, she saw her wife cuddling with their two youngest merriment clear in her eyes.

Faced with overwhelming opposition and irresistible cute pouts from all sites, Shepard did what every wise tactician would do and surrendered. With one last faux-irritated huff she conceded. “Well let’s get going then.”   

* * *

 

Not even ten minutes later in the family’s private residential area the two adults were watching their children tear through their literal mountains of gifts, send despite repeated protests from both parents, by their aunts and uncles from all over the galaxy. Or in case of their oldest, pretend to be above it all and too cool for such behavior while secretly still being thrilled by everything she got. Both of the grandparents residing at the mansion had as of yet not risen from the room they shared since Shepard had told her embarrassed mother a couple of months after Hannah’s retirement, that she was too old to sneak around at night like a horny teenager and that there was no shame in finding someone new to spend her days with so many years after Mark’s death.

While her children were occupied with their war on gift wrapping paper, Shepard used a soft tendril of biotic energy to lift her present for Liara from it’s resting place under the tree and to carefully levitate it in her bondmate’s hands. “Merry Christmas my love.”

Liara took a moment to admire the artfully wrapped gift, before she started to carefully unpack it. When she opened the box, and saw the delicate silver necklace her breath hitched. It was an almost perfect match for the one shad had found at her first solo dig, the one she had put around her mother’s neck before the funeral. With tears in her eyes she looked up, meeting her bondmate’s gaze. “Elly, you remembered, this is … I don’t have… thank you.”

Shepard took a step closer, sweeping Liara in a crushing embrace. The asari buried her face in her partner’s hair and Shepard started to whisper soft encouragements in her ear. “Shh sweetie it’s alright. It’s ok.” In that one moment Elara knew, that all the effort she had put in procuring the perfect gift for her soulmate had been more than worth it.


End file.
